Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters No Rhyme or Reason......Nosler BT's

I'm a little baffled on the subject, specifically in regards to the .284 BT hunting bullets. From the advice and experience of several here, I understand the 7mm 150 BT's to be pretty darn tough, but the 140's not so much. I also understand the 120 BT to be very tough. I would have thought there would be a cutoff point of, say, anything over an "x" grain bullet is tougher than the one's under this point. How does one know which BT's in the same caliber are tougher than another of the same caliber?

All you need is a vice and a grinder or file. There's a bunch of sectioned bullets along with testing photos on the Nosler reloading forum. IMO with the new design of the BT's having the tapered jacket ala Accubond, there won't be a toughness issue.

The way I understand it is that the same jacket blank was used for the 120 and 140 BT.

Since the 140 must be stretched further, it ends up thinner than the 120.

The 150 got it's own jacket, because they acknowledged that they already were thinning out the jacket at the 140's, and couldn't take it even further to make the 150's.

At least that's the word on the street....

JG the 120gr was originally a thin jacketed hunting bullet like the 140gr but the sillouhette boys couldn't knock down the targets(metal goats,chikens, hogs)with it as it was so they beefed it up. So now instead of a progression of thin,thicker,thickest you have thick,thin.thickest jacket progression. That's the main reason for the hunting popularity of the 120's...especially in 280's. powdr

This is my understanding as well...

Swiped this from the "innerweb".



L-R, 120 gr BT, 150 gr BT, 140 gr Accubond, .308" 168 gr, and .308" 180 gr

Aside from the jackets, the cores of Ballistic Tips were made of harder lead alloys after the original versions proved too tender. So even though the jackets can vary on certain models, they all are tougher than the originals.

I've shot a pile of deer and antelope with 140 Ballistic Tips from various 7mm rifles since the early 1990's and the only bullet I've recovered was from a pronghorn buck shot with the 7mm STW. He was quartering away at around 200 yards and I put the bullet in the rear of the rib cage. It was recovered from under the skin on the far shoulder, after breaking the shoulder.

To tag on here, I've never recovered a 140 Ballistic Tip, from my 7mm-08, shooting PA whitetails.

With that said, I started loading 120's for this year.

Why? Why not...?

Yep, why not?

That's one way to tell if you're a rifle loony. If you weren't, you wouldn't bother changing from something already proven to work!

Thanks for the help guys. After I publicly made the remark here a while back that I'd tried the BT's back in the late '80s in a 7mag and hated them, said I'd never use another, blah, blah, blah.........I've become intrigued with the .284 150 BST in my 7mag and 120 BT in my -08. Mainly for deer sized stuff and aoudad......especially after the way they shoot ! Can't wait to whack something with them. My daughter wanted to start shooting some ( was never interested before), so a lightened version of the 120 bt in the 7-08 seems perfect to get her started.

Never seen a 7mm Ballistic Tip of any weight caught by a critter....

I'm gonna try 150 BTs in my Ackley after seeing how perfectly great the 120s shot and killed in my 08.

SO, do we still need to keep the BTs below 3000 fps ??

Dogshooter,

I've seen a few caught by animals, but mostly by animals bigger than deer. Have a couple from gemsbok, which weigh 400-500 pounds and are built VERY soldily, with inch-thick skin on their front end.

And all the BT's retrieved from seer-sized animals were from angling shots, usually involving bone. Shot a Montana whitetail doe last year with a 100-grain BT from a .257 Roberts. She was quartering to me at about 50 yards, so I aimed right for the near shoulder joint and hit it. Found the bullet under the hide at the rear of the ribs on the far side.

Seen a few of them caught by pigs, but they all died.

I had some trouble with the earlier 140 BT's out of a 7-08. I haven't used them on Whitetails or hogs since.

Nothing against the newer ones, just found other stuff that works well and see no reason to change.

JM

From the looks of hte cut-away photos, they got the 150 gr. weight by using more lead and less jacket.

The 150 shown also looks like the thinner, older version.

IMO both the 120 adn 150 BT pictured are the old style. The new BT's have the same shape core/jacket as the accubond. Any BT's purchased in the new slip out style boxes will have the new style core.

I'm sure it happens..... I've just never seen it...


All I know for sure is this: Nosler Ballistic Tips and Alyssa Milano will always be my first loves. Over the years I've heard... and even occasionally seen... reasons to change my mind... but it'll never happen. To this very day.... few have rivaled.... those that have, carry very similar lines....

I've caught darn few NBT's of any cal (never a 7 or a 27). That I can recall.

*55 out of a 22/250 on a monster carp doe @ 200 yds thru both fronts and almost exited

*55 out of my 6/06 on a average whitey doe @ 190 yds, thru both fronts and almost out

*180 out of a 30/378 on a cow elk

*200 NBT out of a 338/06 on a 5 pt bull @ 200 yds, bullet went thru the front, up thru the neck, and we found it about to exit by an ear

That's all I can recall

Dober